happy meals

No. It is not the other infamous happy meal. There are some meals that I just want to be very simple, may be low calorie. Something I can wipe up in a jiffy. They are my notion of fast food and read food, not food-like matter.

There are days I may not feel like spending a lot of effort cooking. In the years that passed I would compromised on picking a takeout when I worked on a house project all day. Not now. I can always whip up something with less effort than driving to pick up a ready made meal.

Here are two meals in the past two days that are very simple and are made from scratch.

hot and sour soup (sort of tom yum goong) and stir fried morning glory with pork belly and fish sauce

here in portland, oregon only in recent years that Asian vegetable becomes accessible; now I can typically find up to 3 types of morning glory;  this one is the most tender variety that I like

morning glory does not keep well in the refrigerator. it has a maximum life of about 3 days.
there is only an once or two of pork belly; i kept the skin too for the different texture

the best way to make tom yum goong is to use shrimps with head - throwing away the shells and heads means foregoing with the umami they contributes; note the half-peeled one in the foreground has the red paste

No canned chicken stock. Next time you see a recipe that calls for canned (low sodium or otherwise) chicken stock, run for the hills. The author obviously knows nothing about cooking. Real cooking rarely requires processed food products.
i boil the head and shell first together with the lemon grass and then strain them out and discard them; the heads and shell does not emit odor in the garbage because the nutrients has been extracted

the creamy look is from the coconut milk

here is another meal the next day; still a very simple and yet delicious meal

asians like morning glory... i like to cook them under high heat - just under a minute the entire process

you can see the bits of thai chili peppers up close; this one has no pork belly

shrimp should have a bit of paste in the head if you peel it right

 a bit of surf clam meat and black tree fungus

 

not even a grain of rice is left

Each of these meal took less than 25 minutes to prepare.